March, 2005

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11
Mar 05

MSN RSS Aggregator Screencast

Yesterday Microsoft made it public that they are working on an web-based RSS Aggregator and also an online bookmark service . It is more like a simple start page idea as one can say from the http://start.com/1 url as well. I thought I could do a screencast of the new aggregator. It didn’t turn out as good as I would like it to be, but unfortunately I do not have too much time in my hands to perfect it. I decided to post it anyways because I wanted to get it out of the door before I notice anyone else does a screencast.

You can check out the screencast here. It is in flash movie format. I have to apologize for the sound. You will hear my laptop’s hard drive screaming at the beginning. I wish I had a better sound setup at the time but I hope everyone can live with that.

As a review, I can say that it looks pretty cool. The interface and the page looks very unlike Microsoft and very Google like. Simple and fast. However, it lacks a lot of crucial features for an aggregator at this point. I am sure those features will be added very soon. But, in my opinion, being that late in the game, Microsoft should be able to introduce some extra stuff to prevent being Bloglines or MyYahoo clone. As a final note, I have to say, I am impressed how fast they introduced the Firefox support. Now, the other start page should provide Firefox support. I think the support will be there soon.

UPDATE: You may also want to check out the story at Inside Microsoft, and SiliconBeat

UPDATE 2: Steve Rider of Microsoft left a comment and said that he pointed Mike Torres of MSN to the screencast and there is now a link to it at Mike Torres’ blog. This is too cool for me. Thanks Steve and Mike.

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8
Mar 05

Office XP Ad

Oh, I must post this before I go. I almost forgot. I read about the XP ad that was shot in Switzerland and that was never aired (and will never be aired) at Boing Boing. There is a link to the video, which you must definetely see. I can understand why Microsoft dismissed it. I don’t want to use the word that Boing Boing used for the ad because I know my Adsense impressions may be full of unwanted ads and links in the following days.

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8
Mar 05

Istanbul or Microsoft Office Communicator

It had been a while since I read about Istanbul. Today I learned from the Seattle PI article that Microsoft held a launch event for Istanbul, which is now Microsoft Office Communicator and is said to be released in three months.

Istanbul was a name that would be more fun, don’t you think? Do all the names need to be boring, like Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005? Does the name of the product need to say what it is exactly? Is there a product naming convention in Microsoft? Scoble may be able to answer these questions.

I keep thinking, would Apple market this as iStanbul? I don’t know, I am just playing folks.

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8
Mar 05

Hanging in There

As you can say from my post, I am hanging in there in case you were wondering. I am preparing for my prelim exam. Just a little less than two weeks left. It is going OK. I spend less time reading blogs, surfing and blogging.

I have many things to write about once I am done with the exam. Topics will range from podcasting, IT education, Filangy, screencasting…Why do I always have too many things to write about when I have too many other things to do? Does that happen to you too?

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8
Mar 05

Harvard Business School: You Peek, You Lose

The Slashdot story attracted my attention in the midst of my prelim preparation marathon(!). The moral of the story is: be patient, don’t attempt to get access to your acceptance letter using a hacker’s instructions on a forum or you may be rejected admission. I am just kidding, it is surely unethical to attempt to access information that is not public. 

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